literary jail beckons again
Mar. 8th, 2009 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Remember that long conversation we had about litratcher a couple of weeks back?
Well...
"Asked if they had ever claimed to read a book when they had not, 65% of respondents said yes and 42% said they had falsely claimed to have read Orwell's classic [1984] in order to impress. This is followed by Tolstoy's War and Peace (31%), James Joyce's Ulysses (25%) and the Bible (24%)."
I swear I really truly have read Ulysses!
PS. Thanks to
catsparx for the link.
PPS. Gary Numan rocks!
Well...
"Asked if they had ever claimed to read a book when they had not, 65% of respondents said yes and 42% said they had falsely claimed to have read Orwell's classic [1984] in order to impress. This is followed by Tolstoy's War and Peace (31%), James Joyce's Ulysses (25%) and the Bible (24%)."
I swear I really truly have read Ulysses!
PS. Thanks to
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
PPS. Gary Numan rocks!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 12:49 am (UTC)Sorry to not be impressive, but I haven't read any cept for some chapters from the Bible. I did read half of Thomas More's Utopia a little less than a decade ago though. That count? :P
no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 01:32 am (UTC)Luckily everyone gave me money for my birthday, so I can buy books now (unless I can get them free to review...but hey, I think you'd rather like the money!).
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Date: 2009-03-08 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 07:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 12:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 11:06 pm (UTC)ah, but have you read all three of those
Date: 2009-03-08 09:54 pm (UTC)Ulysses ... more than once, at uni 20 years ago
Bible .. all the way through - at school in UK, we had a brilliant evangelical/anglican lay preacher for a teacher who gave us a very solid education - versus indoctrination :)
Re: ah, but have you read all three of those
Date: 2009-03-08 11:08 pm (UTC)The Bible is a fascinating book. So many great stories (if you ignore all the boring bits) and a great source of ideas.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 10:25 pm (UTC)I realise that Riddley Walker is a little too obscure to make the top of a list like that but I would have thought that a very likely book to claim to have read, rather than having actually read.
(I must also confess that, while I have read Ulysses, I remember surprisingly little of it. It is my intention to go back and read it again. After War and Peace.)
* Which will happen about 1533 years^ from the time that he started. It's no wonder Woodstock became irked.
^ And for those of you who haven't read Riddley Walker+, this gives you the time to have an entire decaying post-apocalyptic civilisation or two and go over to Snoopy's place and he would still be reading.
+ Which I recommend. #
# Reading the book, that is. I suppose that I could have just written 'A book which I recommend' but what is the point of a footnote if not to provide some immutability in a mutable world? **
** Apart from, of course, the actual point of footnotes.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 12:23 am (UTC)Re=posted due to bad formatting
Date: 2009-03-08 10:45 pm (UTC)I have read 1984, but only because it was the novel I had to study for the my HSC (in, you guessed it, 1984). I read a lot of classics because I did English and Australian Literature as a side stream to my librarianship degreee. That's when I fell in love with Austen and Trollope. Haven't read War and Peace yet. I'm waiting for retirement for that one.
I wonder how many people have read some of the great books of Australian Literature, eg For the Term of his natural life, Robbery under arms, Such is Life(a personal favourite, Wildcat falling or Wake in Fright?
Re: Re=posted due to bad formatting
Date: 2009-03-08 11:12 pm (UTC)I've only read some Australian classics because I felt quite alienated by the them when I was younger. They spoke to a very different Australia than the one I knew. Where were the magnificent desserts, the tropical forests, etc? I'd probably appreciate them more now, but time is always the issue. Sigh.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 11:14 pm (UTC)Didn't meet him afterwards. Hung out around the stage door for a while then wandered off to get something to eat instead. I gather he came out about a minute later--d'oh!
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Date: 2009-03-09 01:45 am (UTC)Thanks for the CD of his music. I didn't realize how good his music was. I was stuck on "Are friend electric" Serves me right.
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Date: 2009-03-10 12:22 am (UTC)And hurrah! Glad you enjoyed the music. He's done so many different things down the years, and I like nearly all of it.